Functions

MAL comes with a standard functional abstraction scheme. Functions are represented by MAL instruction lists, enclosed by a function signature and end statement. The function signature lists the arguments and their types. The end statement marks the end of this sequence. Its argument is the function name.

The module name 'user' designates the collection to which this function belongs. A missing module name is considered a reference to the current module, i.e. the last module or atom context openend. All user defined functions are assembled in the module user by default.

The functional abstraction scheme comes with several variations: commands, patterns, and factories. They are discussed shortly.

Side-effects

Functions can be pre-pended with the keyword unsafe, which designates that execution of the function may change the state of the database or sends information to the client. Unsafe functions are critical for the optimizers, because their order of execution should be guaranteed. Functions that return a value of type :void are considered unsafe by default.

Inline functions.

Functions prepended with the keyword inline are a target for the optimizers to be inlined. This is particularly useful when a vectorized version can be used in cases where only scalar function is known.